Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G question for other owners

I received my new Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G today. The UPS guy was nice enough to report he left it "on the porch" when he actually left it down at the end of the driveway by the road. In the rain. Anyway .. I brought it inside and opened it. Only the outer boxes were actually wet. The inner boxes were still dry, so no harm there. (phew!)

After assembling it in the living room, I've encountered a possible issue, however. My RA access appears to have a small bit of play, even with the RA clutch engaged. It rotates back and forth. The movement isn't actually much (appears to be about half the width of one of the lines on the RA scale), but it is very free movement within that short bit with very hard stops each way (light pressure in either direction moves it into whatever is stopping the movement (the worm teeth, possibly?) which sends a vibration through the whole mount. There is no play at all in the dec axis and there's no 'slop' in the RA access, other than that looseness back and forth along its axis of rotation.

My question for other owners is "Does your mount do that too?" I can't decide if this is odd backlash or if something is out of adjustment (or worse, broken).

I've sent a couple messages to Orion about it as I've decided it's actually defective from the factory. No response yet, though.

I did some snooping with a flashlight, and without taking anything apart (so as to avoid voiding the warranty) I can't really see anything that could be construed as a worm lash adjustment (or any other sort of adjustment). I suspect there's quite a bit of disassembly required to get at whatever is loose or broken, so my current plan is to pester Orion.

That sounds like a fairly normal amount of play in the RA gears. You don't want your gears ultra tightly meshed, as that increases wear on the worm and gears. I suggest you use the mount before deciding that it has a problem. The proof is in the pudding as they say. You've yet to eat the pudding, ergo have no proof. Certainly not enough evidence to conclude that it's defective.

Different units of the same mount will have different gear mesh settings from the factory. Whose to say the tight ones aren't the ones out of spec? I've had multiple CG5-GTs, and two have had only slight RA play while one has had considerably more. All three of them worked well for years. I still have one - the one with the greater play. No worries here.

It is easy to adjust the gear mesh on the EQ-6 if there is too much, or too little, play. I haven't seen the AZ-EQ6 but it's likely the same deal on that mount. I don't believe it is covered in the manuals but I've done it with my EQ-6 a couple of times. You don't even have to open up the housing. Basically you loosen slightly the four screws on the RA housing and you'll see a hole containing a recessed setscrew on either end of the RA housing. Those two setscrews tighten or loosen the mesh. Just experiment until you get it how you want it. Sorry I can't show any visuals at the moment, but maybe you can check it out based on what I've said. I doubt there's anything defective, just an incorrectly set RA gear mesh, if that. As others have said, a small amount of play is often normal and you needn't worry about it.

This play in the mount can be very annoying when using the mount especially with a longer telescope on board. I adjusted this play out of my Sirius mount following instructions I found out here on CN. There is probably a simple way to do that same adjustment on this new mount as well.